Publication Account

Date 1995

Event ID 1123801

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1123801

Rescue excavation at this Bronze Age field monument near Crawford, Lanarkshire, organized by Historic Scotland ahead of the M74/M6 motorway construction, and financed by Scottish Office Industry Department (Roads Directorate), has revealed a variety of platform structures indicative of some degree of differential use of the buildings. Radiocarbon results obtained from four of the platforms suggest an occupational history running from a possible Late Neolithic date through to the Middle Bronze Age period. An intensive and sustained period of settlement on this north-facing hillside is also indicated from the repair and rebuilding phases recorded on most of the excavated platforms. A large and important domestic Bronze Age pottery assemblage was recovered, which included some vessel types previously found on funerary sites. Environmental data collected from extensive sampling revealed evidence of local woodland exploitation and cultivation of barley in association with the settlement.

Traces of cultivation terraces are recorded below the platforms to the west of Lintshie Gutter (National Monuments Record of Scotland: NS 92 SW 28). However, there appears to have been some confusion with earlier records. Angus Graham (1939, 314) records the presence of cultivation terraces about 200 yds (183 m) east of Hurl Burn and 300 yds (274 m) above the road (referring to the old Carlisle road through the village). But these co-ordinates, even allowing for minor error, are more in line with the position of the platforms. Certainly, if observed from the road (Graham 1939, 289), the linear arrangement of the platforms could easily be construed as cultivation terraces, especially at a time before the general recognition (RCAHMS 1967) of the unenclosed platform settlement as a monument class. Hence later observations of the site, recorded in the National Monuments Record of Scotland, have rather unwisely cited the various humps and bumps of the unimproved ground below the platforms as evidence of this terracing and therefore introduced a field system contemporary with the platforms. Unfortunately this misidentification of a field system has found its way on to Ordnance Survey maps.

J Terry 1995